VAN ASSELDONK BOU

W BEDRIJF EINDHOVEN

Aart took the visitor back in time.

With his show from 2015, the allegory of the south, Aart took the visitor back in time. During the Dutch Design Week of 2016, Aart did not use the history of mankind as the starting point, but his own past. He used his youth as a starting point for the show that ended in 2016 at the Van Abbe museum in Eindhoven. A youth where his love for making originated. The show was an ode to the person who has fostered his love for making, and has always supported him unconditionally in his development as a designer, but especially as a person. His father, Arie.

During the design week, Atelier van Asseldonk transformed the van Abbe museum into a real building site and the Van Abbe was renamed ‘van Asseldonk Bouwbedrijf Eindhoven’ under the leadership of contractor Aart. The world of construction workers is one that is at odds with the world of the white walls that we know from the museum, while these walls had not stood there without the presence of construction workers. They are the people who truly transform the world around us.

The outside area of the museum was fenced off with construction fences within which concrete mills turned, and people walked up and down with wheelbarrows. The traditional Dutch radio also sounded loudly like it often does at a real construction site. For some of the audience it was sometimes so convincing that they thought the exhibition was a real building site and therefore doubted whether they could enter or not.

During the exhibition we focused on the unfinished. An ode to the building process and the people who make this process possible. It was a real insight in Atelier van Asseldonk. Another reason we transformed ourselves into a building company was because we were actually building something outside of the museum. A larger-than-life folley tower rose from water outside of the museum. The spectators could witness laying the last hands on the construction.